1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a portable positioning and mobility device useful in providing physical and/or occupational therapy to developmentally/physically challenged individuals. More particularly, the compact, portable device is designed for use in an early intervention program involving, e.g., pre-term infants or young children with medically and/or physically compromising conditions such as failure to thrive or low birth weight.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Every year, in the United States and worldwide, large numbers of developmentally challenged children are born. Such children may suffer, for example, from conditions such as low birth weight and/or failure to thrive, often resulting in a decreased range of motion and/or in generalized developmental delays. It is desirable, therefor, for such individuals, also generically referred to herein as "children" or "patients", to receive therapeutic treatment for developing or enhancing their positioning, mobility or other motor skills as soon after birth as possible.
In the case of infants and young children, however, such treatments are difficult to carry out because the equipment and associated supplies currently available in the marketplace to facilitate therapy of this type are typically designed and constructed for use in treating older children and young adults. They do not, therefore, take into account the specific needs of those working with infants and children up to about forty pounds in weight and/or two years of age. Equipment manufactured specifically for use by infants and/or small children for therapeutic treatment, such as infant walkers and infant feeder seats placed on dollies to offer additional movement, do not integrate the two concepts of mobility and alternative positioning necessary to achieve important developmental milestones.
This common problem may be exemplified as follows. Optimal positioning of a child's head, neck and trunk are often ignored when a child who is not necessarily developmentally ready is placed in a walker, therefore fostering inappropriate skills or poor quality of higher developmental milestones occurring due to progression at too rapid a rate. Another example involves infant seats, which are designed to place the child in upright position and often are of a size which does not adequately support the smaller infant, nor does it offer positions other than a reclined upright position.
The devices described above only offer one position, e.g., erect standing or reclined sitting. Moreover they also require the infant to be removed in order to modify the position of the child, which risks deviating the child's position. In summary, therefor, the above-described devices do not offer varied degrees of movement nor do they provide movement in a variety of directions. Most devices presently available for such applications thus offer one position, usually utilizing a reclined feeder seat, maintaining the child in a static non-moveable seated position, rather than permitting a variety of varied developmental positions. Another drawback to many of the devices presently available on the market is that they are cumbersome and non mobile, i.e., they are placed on dollies, or are in the form of a kit which is staticly placed on the floor in the form of a mat with a larger bolster. Thus they can not be placed at tabletop level for the convenience of the treating clinician or caregiver.
There has therefore been a long felt need among caregivers in this field for a readily portable compact device adapted for use in providing positioning and mobility therapy to developmentally challenged infants and very young children.